The wearing of rigger boots is often a bone of contention and I can understand why some clients or contractors would not want their workers to wear them from an ankle support perspective. My current project involves both terrestrial and marine work and from the risk assessment conducted we concluded riggers were the correct choice for our marine workforce due to ease of removal should they fall into the ocean and laced up boots with ankle support was the correct choice for the rest. IMHO if a R/A was conducted for the selection of appropriate footwear it would be pretty difficult to go against your clients decision. On the subject of wellington boots and without being too presumptuous I would think the use of wellies would be for specific tasks such as pouring concrete or working in muddy filled excavations and not worn as a matter of course for the entire shift Hope this helps

We have a contracting division working for Principals in both Highways and Railways and from our internal RA and with consideration for specific contract demands each worker has two sets of boots - laced with ankle protection for railway works due to the loose / moving nature of the track ballast and riggers for Highway Works so that there are no issues with tripping over / splitting laces the argument used in favour of riggers. Wet work situations are issued with quite high specification ergo not cheap wellingtons (specified to keep the cold out) that offer padding but not support around the ankle. In all other contracts the employees are free to choose which pair of their safety footwear to use (the majority prefer riggers). What is described in the post - the principals H&S saying we are not allowed riggers is once again an insurance driven blanket PPE policy disguised under the pretext of Health an Safety. Yes there is research regarding ankle support but we do not all work on track ballast all of the time. If it were a true H&S matter there would be a boot specification not an "approved boot" being issued.

Hi Not sure anyone has considered this when I worked on a site Rigger boots were banned due to first aid reasons as well. The client claimed that should anything fall into a rigger boot causing the foot to swell a rigger boot is one of the hardest materials to cut apart, whereas boots with laces could be cut through the lace to remove the boot and obviously wellies can be cut quite easily. Might be slightly off at a tangent and if it is I apologise.